


how did we forget how to be alive ?

by maylandie



Category: One Direction (Band), Zayn Malik (Musician)
Genre: (Very mild), Alternate Universe - Zombies, Angst, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mild Gore, Mild Smut, Minor Character Death, Minor Zayn Malik/Liam Payne, Temporary Character Death, sort of but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 10:33:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6150769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maylandie/pseuds/maylandie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry has been dead for six months.<br/>Harry’s been back since yesterday.<br/>Harry’s got scars on his arms, his back, and Zayn doesn’t want to think about the rest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how did we forget how to be alive ?

**Author's Note:**

> hello ! This is my first Zarry story on ao3, so I hope you enjoy it. English is not my first language so there might be some weird sentences in there, sorry about that. This was an idea that I had in mind for a while and it begged to be written down, so here we are. It's not exactly a zombie story, it's more about dead people simply not being dead.  
> I gotta mention that death is a theme that is central to this story, there's some violence and gore too. Please be careful.  
> I will add an alternate ending soon, I'm working on it right now.  
> Hope you enjoy reading this, please leave comments and/or kudos, that'd make me really happy :)

Zayn is making coffee when he hears a knock on his door. He considers staying inside, ignoring whoever is coming to disturb him. He doesn’t want to see anyone.

Harry has been dead for six months.

Harry’s been back since yesterday.

Harry’s got scars on his arms, his back, and Zayn doesn’t want to think about the rest. He’s seen his body, in the basement where he died, and then on the cold metal table. Harry’s dead and now he’s alive, and the shock is still here but now, Zayn can only try to make himself busy, as if it could make him forget that this is real. It's not possible. This can’t be happening. He remembers, clearly. Harry and himself, in the basement. And that man with the knife who left cuts all over his boy’s body. He’s been dreaming about it since the night it happened. But Harry’s back and it doesn’t make sense.

He goes to the door, opens it. Louis’ here. Standing right there with the most neutral expression covering his face, and Zayn wants to punch him in the face for not showing any emotions. “I saw Harry” Louis says. Zayn doesn’t respond. There’s nothing to say to that. Me too, I saw him and he’s scarred but alive and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.

“He slept at my house.” And Zayn can’t help but feel a burning jealousy rise in him. “He gets nightmares. Can’t stop screaming your name.” Zayn wants to cry.

 

He doesn’t know how this is possible. There are other people outside, with scars on their bodies. People who are supposed to be dead. People who died exactly six months ago. There’s Niall’s brother, who was in that bus that ended at the bottom of the river. He doesn’t have scars, but his lips are always colored a weird shade of blue. Zayn would like to say that they look like they never died, but that’d be a lie. They look haunted, and maybe that’s worse.

The truth is he doesn’t care about anyone beside Harry. And two days later, he goes to Louis’ place, rings the bell. When Louis opens the door, Zayn goes to the living room. Harry is right there, on the couch, facing the wall, and all Zayn can see is the top of his head, his long dark hair. He still looks the same. Like that, he could be the same boy he met when they were seventeen. But Zayn goes to stand in front of him, and despite the smile on his face, his eyes are dead. He looks sad, worse than he did in that basement. And Zayn hates himself for thinking that. Because until now, there was nothing worse than that basement.

“Hi” says Harry. His voice is still the same. Deep. Raw. “Hi” Zayn replies, in a whisper. They don’t say anything after that. Zayn sits down next to him, and they don’t say a word. After maybe one or two hours, he lets his hand slip under Harry’s palm, their fingers touching lightly. He’s feeling his skin again, so carefully, and he isn’t sure he’s ever going to be able to touch it the way he used to.

 

Harry falls asleep with his head on Zayn’s shoulder, and a few hours later, Zayn allows himself to close his eyes. When he wakes up, Harry’s still there, awake. He’s back to watching that invisible mark on the wall. Liam and Louis are in the kitchen, whispering about something. Harry, probably, or the both of them, or all those dead people who are alive again since last Thursday.

“I woke up in that basement” says Harry suddenly. And Zayn doesn’t really understand, because his body was brought back from that place, it was buried and how… how could it even come back to life in a place where it doesn’t exist ? Zayn is confused, but at that point, he could believe anything. Harry was dead and now he’s alive. Anything could happen. “At first I was confused, because I… I sort of remember watching my body being taken away, I remember watching you cry for hours, every night, in our bed, I remember the funeral, Liam, Louis and Niall trying to get you out of the house. They took you to that bar we hated...” Harry’s face was blank, as though he was stating facts that didn’t concern him. “I remember thinking that you should go, really, you should”.

It hurts. It hurts so fucking much, and Zayn doesn’t want to listen to that anymore. He does, though. He wants to know everything, wants to hear every bit of Harry’s story, but not like that, not… There’s a thousand things he wants to say, starting with I couldn’t think about anything other than you, and I didn’t want to love anyone other than you, and I’m sorry that I slept with Liam those three times, but I was sad and lonely.

“I woke up and thought it was a dream. I saw the basement and I thought that we were still there, you know, still stuck in that nightmare. But my arms weren’t tied up, and I could move. I wasn’t hurt, and it was so fucking calm all around me. I went up the stairs, and found a mirror in the house. I looked okay, but there was that bit of a scar on my collarbone, and I moved my shirt a bit and it was there, a big long scar. I had more on my arms and chest. And I went outside, and there was that stone with my name on it. Candles, flowers, pictures. We will never forget you, Harry Styles, the stone said. It didn’t hit me, not really, because all this time I had thought I was dead, and I was. But… it’s still kinda weird” Harry said, playing with the hem of his shirt.

Yeah, it is, it’s more than kinda weird though.

 

Zayn doesn’t know a lot about zombies, but what he knows is that Harry’s not one. Harry’s not walking around like a disgusting mass of flesh and bones. He’s got problems with his left arm. Sometimes, it won’t move the right way. Zayn’s not sure if it is because he was asleep for so long, or if the cuts went so deep that they hurt his nerves. Harry’s not a soulless, flesh-eating creature. Harry’s kind, and gentle, and silent, and sad. There’s the hopefulness of being alive, of being back to his life, where he’s surrounded by people he loves, and the monster who did this to him is in jail. There’s death too, like a turned off light, like he’s been to hell and he’s not completely back.

Harry screams every night, and Zayn cries. Then Harry cries, and Zayn still cries. They don’t cry for the same reasons, and Zayn kind of wished they did, because at least they could understand each other fully. He spends his nights with a traumatized twenty year-old and cries about his lost innocence.

 

Six months pass, and almost everything is back to normal. The people who came back that day are still recognizable, but they fit in, they are part of the town now. It’s like they never died. Niall’s brother spends his weekends partying and fucking because life gave him a second chance and he doesn’t intend on wasting it. Niall’s back to being Niall.

Liam and Louis are now fucking, every Monday night, it seems. No one knows exactly how it happened. All the drama brought them together, the two of them, the ones who weren’t completely cut open by the tragedy. Their whispering, their Mom and Dad attitude, it created something. So now, they’re fucking. And maybe there’s more than that to what they do. But that’s between the two of them.

Harry’s still crying at night. The screaming is gone, though. Now, he wakes silently and stares at the wall. Zayn’s stopped crying himself to sleep. Now, he too stares at the wall. It’s like those six months did nothing for them, except getting them used to the situation. They don’t get over it, they don’t heal, they just… get used to it. If you can’t get rid of the sickness, you start living with it.

Harry finds a job in a bakery. He starts very early in the morning, when everyone else is still asleep. It’s easier. The dark keeps him from closing his eyes, and he can sleep better in the afternoon, after drinking a cup of tea, the rays of the sun hitting his cheek as he falls asleep on the couch. The darkness reminds him of that basement. It reminds him of being dead.

Liam tries to tell him that he should maybe see a doctor, a psychiatrist, someone. But they don’t have one in town, and Harry would have to go to the city. The city where no one knows about dead people not being dead. He doesn’t want to be treated like a crazy person, locked up in a hospital where no one believes him. And that’s a good point. That’s a very good point.

So they stay and try to live and make things better. Harry and Zayn get a dog. They call him Pandora. Louis keeps telling Harry that it sounds a bit too girly for a male, but Harry doesn’t seem to care. Zayn doesn’t say anything. He just smiles at Harry and shrugs. So Harry bakes and plays with Pandora, and it looks like he’s getting better. Zayn knows, though. He knows that few things have changed. He still cries, he’s still afraid.

Spring starts, and the season of rebirth is tainted with the memory of death. Harry died on the 29th of March, and one year later, Zayn still remembers. Harry doesn’t connect the dots, but there’s something in the way he walks that proves that some part of him remembers.

 

Louis and Liam are officially dating. Apparently, it’s been going on since a few weeks after Harry came back. They plan to get married, and that could be funny if it weren’t so meaningful. No one sees the joke in that, in the fact that Zayn and Harry have been together for three years now, and that the order of the world seems to be different. It’s like they missed their train, and everything is happening around them, the world is turning, people get married. They stay back. Left behind.

It’s just the five of them, at the restaurant, celebrating Louis and Liam’s love. There’s no big burst of joy, but there are smiles, and looks that mean the world. Harry leaves a kiss on Louis’ cheek. Pandora licks Liam’s face, and it would be disgusting if it didn’t make the boys laugh. Zayn’s not sure if they’ve laughed like that since he got out of that basement with Harry’s corpse in his arms.

“Do you ever think about it ?” Harry asks that night, when they’re in bed. Zayn knows that whatever “it” means, the answer is yes. He doesn’t give that answer. So they fall asleep, just like that.

 

Zayn quits his job one day, without telling anyone beforehand. He’s now making artwork for a magazine, and his paintings are selling. He tells Harry at dinner, and Harry kisses him. They don’t see Niall for a month. He’s gone to Canada to play his music with “the best band in the world” that no one knows of. Zayn’s happy for him. It looks like their lives are making sense again.

He makes love to Harry, kisses every scar on his body. With each thrust, Harry shudders and it’s magical. Maybe it’s one of the only moments where they’re back to who they were before. Their love is the same, and they still make love the same way. It’s more powerful though, like this is everything they’ve ever needed. They forget about everything else. In this moment, it’s just the two of them.

“It still hurts a bit, you know” Harry says one day. “The scar on my hip, it burns. I think the blade went deeper on that one, to the bone maybe. It’s ugly, and it still hurts. The ones on my chest too, but only when I stretch. It feels like they reopen a bit, like the skin is being pulled.”

Again Harry is so detached from what he says that Zayn wants to cry. Maybe that’s how he copes with it, by pretending it didn’t happen to him. If it’s somebody else, then it’s not as bad. Zayn can’t do that though. He can’t escape like that. He’s stuck. He’s stuck because it didn’t happen to him, not directly. But he was there, he saw it happen, and it hurts. Because he’s here now, watching Harry, listening to Harry. And it’s breaking him a little bit inside.

 

Louis and Liam adopt a little girl. Her name is Sarah, and she’s almost two years old. Zayn watches Harry open up to her and he’s never seen anything more beautiful. Sarah loves him, and it’s easy to see that she instantly makes it in that category of people that Harry loves more than anything in the world. They’re in the backyard, playing with Pandora, and it’s like the bad things never happened. Harry smiles, and one day, Sarah puts her finger on one of his scars and asks “How did you get that ?” Something is constricting in Zayn’s stomach, but Harry smiles, because that’s all he ever does with her. “It’s a pretty long story, and I promise I’ll tell it to you when you’re a bit older”.

She’s six years old when she hears the story, and she tells Harry that he’s the nicest zombie she’s ever met, which is pretty cool. And Zayn thinks that maybe it’s not that bad, to be the nicest zombie she’s ever met. And he looks at Harry and yeah, he seems to like the idea. His eyes are shining with pride, and Zayn can’t hide the smile that breaks his face.

Pandora dies that year, and it’s a bit like a punch in the gut. Sarah asks them if he’s coming back as a nice zombie, like Harry. And it’s hard, it’s one of the hardest things ever, to tell her that no, Pandora won’t be back. They bury him under the only tree they have in the backyard of their new house, the house they bought, a bit outside the city. They don’t get another dog.

 

The man who hurt Harry dies in prison. They don’t get the details, and they’re only informed of it a week after it happened. From what they understand, he was beaten to death by three other criminals. It’s a weight lifted off Zayn’s chest. Until then, there was the possibility of him getting out of jail, and coming back. But now it’s over. It’s really over.

Zayn had thought a few times of ways to kill him, but he never even considered the option of doing it. Killing someone. But now that somebody did it for him, his conscience is clean, and he can’t help but be glad. Harry’s not talking about it, he doesn’t think anything of it. It’s like he doesn’t even care. Zayn hopes he suffered. He hopes he suffered a lot, hopes he begged like Harry did.

 

They never have kids. They don’t get married. They grow old, the both of them. Harry opens his bakery, tries new cupcake flavours that no one really wants to taste. Zayn covers every façade of the house with his art. It’s a quiet life. They sometimes see Liam and Louis, after Sarah left to live her life in the city. They sometimes see Niall, who travels a lot and seems to be having a blast. The five of them reunite every six months and suddenly it’s like they’re in their early twenties again. They sit in Harry and Zayn’s garden, and they’re almost fine. And Zayn keeps his palm pressed on Harry’s scarred hand, as he always does. And Harry’s still scared of the dark, but it’s getting easier, waking up next to Zayn’s warm body. They feel alive.


End file.
